December 21st 2015 at 806 p.

M.

Eastern Standard Time or 106 p.

M.

Universal Coordinated time.

You are looking at the Falcon nine.

On the space.

It's launchpad as it awaits its 8 29 PM local launch.

Welcome to the live webcast of the Space sex march of the Orbcomm mission from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida My name is Lauren Lions.

I'm admission integrator here in Space X, and I'm standing outside of Mission Control at our company headquarters here in Hawthorne, California As you can see, we have tons of people out here really excited because today is not just any old launch space.

X.

Today's launch represents a serious of first.

For us, it's our first flight.

Following are approximately six month hiatus following our June 28th anomaly.

It's the first flight of our upgraded Falcon nine rocket.

We're gonna tell you more about that later on.

We'll also be deploying 11 guess 11 of the Orbcomm satellites, another first for Space X, and today, if all goes well, we'll make history by being the first to fly back and land the first stage of our rocket to land Hans of stuff going on today, So let's get started on your screen.

You currently see the inky blackness of the beautiful night skies of Cape Canaveral, Florida, where we're about to launch 11 Orbcomm satellites aboard our Falcon nine rocket standing tall and proud, I'm Michael Hamersley and materials engineer.

Here.

It's basics, and I'll tell you a little bit more about what's going on.

The 11 Orbcomm satellites are sitting inside the nose of the vehicle.

We call that the fairing.

It's a shell comprising carbon fiber and aluminum honey comb.

It is sitting on the main body of the rocket, which actually comprises two stages.

The first stage is what gets the entire rocket up to about 100 kilometers in altitude.

At that point, the second stage separates and continues taking the 11 or con satellites upto low earth orbit, which is about moving at about eight kilometers per second, or eight times the speed of a rifle bullet.

The first stage will actually continue its trajectory and reach apogee.

It's a maximum height of about 200 kilometers before, and we're very excited about this before coming back to land at Landing Zone one on Cape Canaveral grounds next to the rocket, you see the transporter Erector, also called the Strong Back.

It's actually what moves the rocket from the hangar to the pad, raises it up and then supports it until liftoff.

It also serves as a conduit for fuel and electrical connections to the vehicle surrounding the rocket.

There several lightning protection towers called catenary towers.

These direct the energy from a lightning strike safely into the ground.

Florida is the lightning capital of the United States.

The space shuttle launch site was struck by lightning about three times a year on average.

You'll also notice the location of white smoke that's totally normal.

The propellant that we're using is liquid oxygen, which is so cold that when it becomes a gas way, need to vent it in order to prevent the rocket from over pressurizing.

And even as a gas, it's still again is so cold that it will cause Ah, there we go.

That's the plumes.

It will vent and condense the atmosphere around it, just like when you're breathing out on a cold morning, you can see your breath to the upper right of your screen.

You see a countdown clock and follow us below on the Mission Progress Bar to see where we are during launch.

Good evening.

I'm Johnny's Burger factor.

Nine.

Product director.

I've been following the countdown the past few hours.

I'll be bringing you stand us up days as we go through the Webcast.

As you saw, people are gathering in front of the Mission Control Room here.

It's Space six headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

We'll bring you more of that energy as we go during our Webcast.

Now currently is, I've said before Launch is the most exciting part of the job for the team here.

It space sex will hopefully see the payoff for a lot of hard work in just a short while.

Now, if you have been with us on previous Webcasts, you know there are four factors that we look at in determining readiness to launch.

The first is the folk a nine.

The good news is that Space six team is working on no issues at the moment now.

Unlike previous Factor nine missions, liquid oxygen propellant loading began just a few minutes ago at T minus 35 minutes now.

In the past we began loading inside of T minus three hours, but fucking nine now uses liquid oxygen.

It colder temperatures provides a denser propellant that allows it to put more propelling on the vehicle.

But it also means that we need to load that propellant as close to launches We can to keep it from warming up because we could put more on the vehicle.

That means we have better performance that results in heavier payloads, toe orbit as well as the ability to land the first aid, something that hopefully will see in just a little while.

The second factor is a satellite.

Today, Falcon nine's carrying the 11 Orbcomm second generation satellites.

Your town team is go there.

Next event is going to internal power.

Third, the range is ready to report with tracking and flight safety equipment.

There people are in place, the hazard areas are clear.

And finally, the weather.

Everybody likes to talk about it, but nobody can actually do anything about it.

We've got a 20% probability of violating conditions.

Mostly we're watching ground winds right now, but we're currently go, so a T minus 17 minutes, 15 seconds.

All systems are go.

Hey, I'm John Federer's feel a lead mechanical design engineer.

Here, it's basics.

And as you heard, we have a lot of really awesome stuff coming up on today's Webcast Now.

Most importantly, we're launching 11 of Orbcomm second generation satellites into low Earth orbit, and today's launch is actually gonna complete Orbcomm consolation around the Earth, allowing them to provide better global coverage for all their customers.

We're not quite sure what I mean by low Earth orbit or constellations.

Don't worry, because we're gonna get into all that orbit of lingo a little bit later on today's Webcast, we're also gonna talk a bit about the many upgrades.

Inmates are Falcon nine launch vehicle, which includes a 33% increase in the overall overall vehicle's performance, as well as a bunch of other items improve the overall vehicle's safety and reliability.

Now, as most of you know, on June 28th we did suffer a mishap with our Sierra seven mission.

An investigation team was formed in the determined, the most probable cause to be a policy struck within our second stage.

Our engineering team didn't just address that faulty struck, but they looked at other vulnerabilities across the Falcon nine and applied those lessons learned to today's launch vehicle making us much more reliable.

And we're all super excited to get off the ground.

The third thing we have to talk about and hopefully get a chance to show you is the land landing of our first stage.

Now, if this works, it'll be a huge first for Space six and the first for a rocket that delivers a payload to orbit.

Now, this first days will actually be coming back and landing at a former launchpad from the fifties and sixties, which we have renamed and called Landing Zone One.

And in the past, we may have made attempts at bringing that stage back at the drone ship in the ocean, But this time around, we're bringing it back at landing zone.

One that you see on your screen right there in the overall area is substantially larger, that we actually can bring that stage back, and we plan, as we've said already, to show you, as much of this entire return process, live on air today.

And if that's not enough excitement, we have Tim Urban.

He's the right of the Web site.

Wait, but why?

I know I'm a huge fan.

He's here to join us and talk with space in space flight in general.

In fact, one of my friends, Tom pretty area accessible.

Give him a tour.

So let's check that out.

Now.

I'm Tim Urban from Wait, but why?

And we're here in the space X headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

A very exciting place to be.

And I'm here with Tom for Dario, and we're gonna go look at something.

All right?

All right.

So welcome to space six.

Yeah, this is very exciting.

Yeah, this is the main factory floor.

We're walking right up.

First thing is the Mission Control Center, which is right there.

Whenever you see people shots from people like, you know, on the monitors in front, like NASA style, like mission monitoring, that all happens right there.

That's the number one spot.

So this thing right here is the first Dragon spacecraft.

This is actually the first commercial spacecraft ever orbit here and successfully re entered before the spacecraft.

The only people who had ever done it for the United States, China and the Soviet Union.

A Russian.

Right.

This is like what everyone had to take Space X Here we have our Berlin manufacturing facility right here.

Centerpieces.

The octo web assembly area.

This is actually what you're looking right Here is the bottom end of the rocket.

And so as Merlin, Once the engines were created in the assembly line down here, they're wheeled over, and then they stick it right into the aqua.

All nine of them right there.

Because the Octopus, solid or bottom of the rocket called the Oculus slots for engines with one small package.

Oh, yeah.

No, it's incredible.

Altogether.

Like it was 360 cars.

Yes.

Yeah, that's a lot of up in the air.

That's a lot of stuff.

So this part right here is my favorite part of the fire factory.

For this is the Dragon Queen.

This is where we assemble the knows.

All the queen men.

These are all the queen wearing the bunny suits to make sure that none of their hair dust gets into the actual right.

All these guys were leading this dragon there eventually.

Gonna take all the red, remove your foreplay stuff off, cleaning up, get ready to roll out.

So, in tank wins, there's actually like, three or four first stage of stacked up and painted and having all the electronics and forming inside.

Last but not least, overhears our three D printing facility.

So a lot of the parts are so small that it's actually very difficult to make him with traditional manufacturing process is, so is it that it is better.

It's cheaper and easier to make it three years.

It is three days.

The only way to make this the way they want it.

Very difficult to make some of these structures like, How would you mill this structure?

Right to be very difficult.

You can't, like, do it in a molder.

Anything.

So 23 pretty.

Um, okay, this is awesome.

Thank you.

I can't believe this is your office.

It's sometimes shocks me through.

The Falcon nine is currently on the pad with 11 nearly identical Orbcomm satellites inside of its Very.

But why?

Well, this comes down to two main things.

The purpose of these satellites and the orbit that will be taking them too.

First about the purpose customers all over the world are looking.

Orbcomm provide communications service is such as remote monitoring a farming equipment on the ground tracking delivery of trucks from point A to point B and even monitoring the temperature of the goods in the backs of those trucks to make sure they get to the place that they need to be in good condition.

But I do this or promise provide them with continuous coverage or a constant signal from the satellite receivers on the ground and do it globally, and this is where their orbit comes into.

Play nine is gonna launch these 11 satellites to look Rick Orbit, which in this case is about 200 come up to 620 kilometers high, which is approximately the distance from L.

A.

To San Francisco.

So while that may be close, it's certainly not easy.

Satellites in low Earth orbit have to move really, really fast in order to keep up with the curvature of the Earth as they're orbiting to avoid de orbiting and crashing into the planet.

In fact, they're going so fast that they make one orbit and only 90 minutes.

So for a single satellite in low earth orbit going at about eight kilometers per second as it zips past its receiver on the ground, it loses its signal the 11th satellites, which performing what is called a constellation with the consolation.

As one of those one of those little satellite zips past, there's another one right behind it To pick up that signal to provide that continuous coverage and what the satellites being strategically placed around the globe, they can provide global coverage to their customers.

These 11 satellites that we're launching today are going to join the 31 others that are already in Orbcomm Constellation orbit, which includes six that Falcon nine.

Lunch back in 2014.

So we've been with your calm for a while.

They've been a great customer and a great partner.

We thank them for this much today.

So now that we know our rocket or a mission objectives for today, let's learn about the rocket we told you about this upgraded Falcon nine Process Improvement engineer Kate Tyce is gonna tell you more about what we've done.

Hey, nice to meet you.

And thanks for taking time to tell me things.

I have a lot of questions.

I've been told there's upgrades.

The Falcon nine.

Yeah, which is cool because it was already really rad rockets.

So thinking from top to bottom of the rocket.

We've extended the second stage as well as the interstates.

We now have identified propelling liquid oxygen.

We also have a 33% increase to our performance.

Taller.